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efmesch

Today I spent most of my time at my hives setting them in order as I returned the extracted honey frames for home cleaning.
The first hive I attended to was my problematic one---no queen, no brood and plenty of wax moth larvae (both species). What I found was totally expected: the hive had become so weak that it couldn't take care of itself. I had seen the robbing going on earlier in the week but wasn't in a position to do anything about it at the time so I had to let the bees fend for
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I went to check out the fate of my two queen cells this morning, once again hoping to see that the queens had emerged, mated and begun laying.
Did I ever say "expect the unexpected"? Well--this one caught me totally by surprise.
I opened the first hive and saw the webbing of wax moth larvae. Not one, not two not.....
The whole hive was overtaken by large swaths of webbing, larvae and cocoons.
At times like this I wonder if the time hasen't come to just throw
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Well, for those of you who have been holding your breaths () waiting for reports of what happened to my grafted queen cell here's the continuation of the story.
I patiently waited until Sunday, July 14th to open the "queenless" hive and see what was going on inside. I confess, on more than one occasion I dreamt in my sleep of opening the hive and finding it "bursting" with new eggs. WELL,........I can't express my unxpected disappointment: A careful search
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Last week I reported about the unexpected grafting I had to make, when I discoverd that a queenless hive had not made use of a frame of eggs/young larvae I had introduced to start new queens.
After completing the graft last week, as I replaced the frame into the center of the hive, I noticed one bee standing over the entrance to the quen cell, as if to prevent any bees from attending to the larva inside. True, the bees had sounded happy, but now I was ready to expect the unexpected---the
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Around early May this year I loaned my hives to my son for polination in one of his hot-houses, where he raises cross-polinated F1 seeds.
When they came back home the hives were returned to their positions and only last Friday, (June 7th) did I finish checking the last hives for an assessment of where they stand after the stresses of travel and hot-house work.UNEXPECTED
I was surprised to discover that one hive was considerably weakened. There were a few last capped cells of
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